Fuoco Puts Ferrari Ahead in Hour Three

Antonio Fuoco put Ferrari into the lead of the 24 Hours of Le Mans with a pass on Porsche Penske Motorsport driver Mathieu Jaminet in the third hour of the race.

The No. 50 Ferrari 499P swept around the outside of the No. 5 Porsche 963 on the run down to Indianapolis midway through the hour.

The Prancing Horse’s lead car had sat in second place since the second round of pitstops, initially with Nicklas Nielsen at the wheel.

However, Fuoco quickly chipped away at the No. 5 Porsche’s lead after taking over after the Porsche had controlled the early running of the race up until that point after a strong opening stint from Julien Andlauer.

Not much after losing the lead to Fuoco, Jaminet dropped back to third as Porsche opted to swap its two leading cars around, with Laurens Vanthoor moving into second place aboard the No. 6 sister car.

That came after a further march up the order from the car that started in 21st place but ran as high as fifth by the end of the first hour.

The No. 51 Ferrari, driven by Antonio Giovinazzi, moved up to fourth after the Italian overtook the No. 311 Action Express Racing Cadillac V-Series.R of Felipe Drugovich in identical fashion to Fuoco’s pass on Jaminet.

Although it has since also lost sixth to the No. 83 Ferrari of Robert Kubica, Drugovich remains the leading Cadillac runner after the two Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA machines faded down the order after starting on the front row.

Brendon Hartley in the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid held eighth in front of the pair of BMW M Hybrid V8 of Dries Vanthoor and Robin Frijns.

The second Toyota, piloted by Kamui Kobayashi, lost time after the Japanese driver locked up and missed Mulsanne Corner, taking to the public roundabout on the edge of the corner before rejoining the circuit.

In LMP2, the No. 43 Inter Europol Competition Oreca 07 Gibson moved to the front with Kuba Smiechowski at the wheel.

RLR M Sport led much of the early running of the class with Patrick Pilet aboard the No. 16 Oreca, but that car dropped back to fourth after Bronze-rated Michael Jensen took over.

As a result, the No. 48 VDS Panis Racing car of Franck Perera moved up to second place with Paul Lafargue third in class behind the wheel of the No. 48 IDEC Sport machine.

Team WRT led LMGT3 in the hands of Ahmad Al Harthy, although the Bronze-rated Omani driver has increasingly lost ground to teams behind that have installed faster drivers.

The No. 46 BMW M4 GT3 EVO initially lost the lead to the No. 10 Racing Spirit of Leman Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Valentin Hasse-Clot.

However, the WRT BMW moved back out front when Derek DeBoer took over.

By the end of the third hour, Alessio Rovera and Richard Lietz had moved into second and third in the No. 21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 and No. 92 Manthey Porsche 911 GT3 R respectively.